As of 2022, Black people were more likely than those of other races to be imprisoned in the United States. In that year, the rate of imprisonment for Black men stood at ***** per 100,000 of the population. For Black women, this rate stood at ** per 100,000 of the population.

This statistic shows the share of the United States prison population that was Black in 2014, by state and the length of time inmates have served. In 2014, **** percent of the prison population in Alabama was Black. For those inmates who had served 10 years or more, that figure rose to ** percent.

As of February 2025, El Salvador had the highest prisoner rate worldwide, with over 1,600 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population. Cuba, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, and the United States, rounded out the top five countries with the highest rate of incarceration. Homicides in El Salvador Interestingly, El Salvador, which long had the highest global homicide rates, has dropped out of the top 20 after a high number of gang members have been incarcerated. A high number of the countries with the highest homicide rate are located in Latin America. Prisoners in the United StatesThe United States is home to the largest number of prisoners worldwide. More than 1.8 million people were incarcerated in the U.S. at the beginning of 2025. In China, the estimated prison population totaled 1.69 million people that year. Other nations had far fewer prisoners. The largest share of the U.S. prisoners in federal correctional facilities were of African-American origin. As of 2020, there were 345,500 black, non-Hispanic prisoners, compared to 327,300 white, non-Hispanic inmates. The U.S. states with the largest number of prisoners in 2022 were Texas, California, and Florida. Over 160,000 prisoners in state facilities were sentenced for rape or sexual assault, which was the most common cause of imprisonment. The second most common was murder, followed by aggravated or simple assault.

In 2022, about 1,826 Black men per 100,000 residents were imprisoned in the United States. This rate was much lower for Black women, at 64 per 100,000 residents. The overall imprisonment rate in 2022 stood at 355 per 100,000 Americans.

Data was collected for each of the 50 states from the year 2019. For each state, the following information is given: total population, total White population, total Black population, total Hispanic population, median household income, total prison population, total parole population, total amount of law enforcement employees, the violent crime rate, and the GDP.

Created for the 2023-2025 State of Black Los Angeles County (SBLA) interactive report. To learn more about this effort, please visit the report home page at https://ceo.lacounty.gov/ardi/sbla/. For more information about the purpose of this data, please contact CEO-ARDI. For more information about the configuration of this data, please contact ISD-Enterprise GIS. table name indicator name Universe source race notes timeframe source url

traffic_stops Traffic stops Traffic violation stops; ORI CA019xxxx (LA County Law Enforcement Agencies) CA DOJ Race is perceived by officer; any one race is alone or in combination with another race 2019 Annual Download from LAC Open Data

perceived_neighborhood_safe_2018 Perceived Their Neighborhood to Be Safe from Crime Estimate (%) Adults (Ages 18 Years and Older) LAC Health Survey

2018 https://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/ha/LACHSDataTopics2018.htm

jail_pop_per100k_2016jail_pop_per100k_2019jail_pop_per100k_2021 Jail population rate per 100k population Average daily number of people held in jail in a given year; population denominator is ages 15 - 64 Vera Institute

2016 2019 2021 https://github.com/vera-institute/incarceration-trends/blob/master/README.mdhttps://trends.vera.org/state/CA/county/los_angeles_county

prison_pop_per100k_2016 Prison population rate per 100k population Point in time count of people in prison on December 31 of a given year; population denominator is ages 15 - 64 Vera Institute

2016 https://github.com/vera-institute/incarceration-trends/blob/master/README.md

arrests_adult_felony Total Felony Arrests - Adult Los Angeles County Arrests CA DOJ The subjectivity of the classification and labeling process must be considered in the analysis of race/ethnic group data. 2017-2021 https://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/data

arrests_adult_misdemeanor Total Misdemeanor Arrests - Adult Los Angeles County Arrests CA DOJ The subjectivity of the classification and labeling process must be considered in the analysis of race/ethnic group data. 2017-2021 https://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/data

domestic_violencedv_maledv_female Percent of Adults (Ages 18 Years and Older) Who Reported Ever Experiencing Physical and/or Sexual Violence by an Intimate Partner.
Adults/td> Los Angeles County Health Survey Overall and broken down by gender 2018 https://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/ha/HA_DATA_TRENDS.htm

This dataset documents the records of mainly Black people incarcerated in the Tennessee State Penitentiary in the period directly before, during, and after the Civil War, from 1850-1870. It includes a staggering amount of formerly enslaved Civil War soldiers and veterans who had enlisted in the segregated regiments of the United States Military, the U.S.C.T. This demographic information of over 1,400 inmates incarcerated in an occupied border state allows us to examine trends, patterns, and relationships that speak to the historic ties between the US military and the TN State Penitentiary, and more broadly, the role of enslavement’s legacies in the development of punitive federal systems. Further analysis of this dataset reveals the genesis of many modern trends in incarceration and law. The dataset of this article and its historiographical implications will be of interest to scholars who study the regional dynamics of antebellum and post-Civil War prison systems, convict leasing and the development of the modern carceral state, Black resistance in the forms of fugitivity and participation in the Civil War, and pre-war era incarceration of free Black men and women and non-Black people convicted of crimes related to enslavement.

In 2019, 2,144 white state prison inmates died in the United States. A further 1,174 Black or African American inmates died in that same year. In total, 3,853 United States state prison inmates died in 2019.

OLS estimates of the association between state-level criminal justice and socioeconomic conditions on prison mortality rates in states reporting to the NCRP, 2000–2014.

Mortality rates (per 10,000 prisoners) and the relative percentage change in prisoner mortality for forty-four states reporting to the NCRP, 2000–2014.

As of December 2020, about 226,800 prisoners who were sentenced through state jurisdictions in the United States were of Hispanic origin. A further 345,500 sentenced state prisoners were Black in that year.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, local jail incarceration rates fell across the board in the United States. In June 2019, the local jail incarceration rate for Black inmates was *** per 100,000 residents. This decreased the following year, where the jail incarceration rate was at *** per 100,000 residents.

How does a criminal record shape interactions with the State and society? We present evidence from a nationwide field experiment in the United States, showing that prospective applicants with criminal records are about five percentage points less likely to receive information from college admission offices. However, we demonstrate that bias does not extend to race. There is no difference in response rates to Black and White applicants. We further show that bias is all but absent in public bureaucracies, as discrimination against formerly incarcerated applicants is driven by private schools. Examining why bias is stronger for private colleges, we demonstrate that the private-public difference persists even after accounting for college selectivity, socio-economic composition and school finances. Moving beyond the measurement of bias, we evaluate an intervention aimed at reducing discrimination: whether an email from an advocate mitigates bias associated with a criminal record. However, we find no evidence that advocate endorsements decrease bureaucratic bias.

As of January 2024, about *** inmates on death row in the United States were white. A further *** death row inmates in that same year were Black, and ** people on death row in the country were Native Americans.

Of the approximately 1.3 million state prisoners in custody in the United States in 2019, around 380,500 were Black or African American. A further 368,000 state prisoners in that year were white.

At the beginning of 2025, the United States had the highest number of incarcerated individuals worldwide, with around 1.8 million people in prison. China followed with around 100,000 fewer prisoners. Brazil followed in third. The incarceration problem in the U.S. The United States has an incredibly high number of incarcerated individuals. Therefore, the incarceration problem has become a widely contested issue, because it impacts disadvantaged people and minorities the most. Additionally, the prison system has become capitalized by outside corporations that fund prisons, but there is still a high cost to taxpayers. Furthermore, there has been an increase in the amount of private prisons that have been created. For-profit prison companies have come under scrutiny because of their lack of satisfactory staff and widespread lobbying. Violent offenses are the most common type of offense among prisoners in the U.S. Incarceration rates worldwide El Salvador had the highest rate of incarceration worldwide, at 1,659 prisoners per 100,000 residents as of February 2025. Cuba followed in second with 794 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. The incarceration rate is a better measure to use when comparing countries than the total prison populations, which will naturally have the most populous countries topping the list.

Despite making up approximately 10-12 pecent of the total population of the United States in the period between 1933 and 1970, Black people comprised roughly 20-30 percent of arrests made in these years. Today, Black people still have the highest incarceration rates relative to their population, however these rates have been declining in the past two decades.

According to a survey conducted in 2023, ** percent of Black adults agreed that the prison system needs to be completely rebuilt to ensure equality for all people, regardless of race or ethnicity, in the United States. In comparison, ** percent of Black adults said that the prison system requires major changes to ensure equality, while eight percent said that only minor changes are required. Only ***** percent of Black adults were found to believe that the prison system requires no changes at all.

In 2021, around 221,200 Black/African American people were confined to local jails in the United States. In that year, Black and African American people were confined to local jails at a higher rate than any other ethnicity.

There were almost 700 thousand slaves in the US in 1790, which equated to approximately 18 percent of the total population, or roughly one in every six people. By 1860, the final census taken before the American Civil War, there were four million slaves in the South, compared with less than 0.5 million free African Americans in all of the US. Of the 4.4 million African Americans in the US before the war, almost four million of these people were held as slaves; meaning that for all African Americans living in the US in 1860, there was an 89 percent* chance that they lived in slavery. A brief history Trans-Atlantic slavery began in the early sixteenth century, when the Portuguese and Spanish forcefully brought captured African slaves to the New World, in order to work for them. The British Empire introduced slavery to North America on a large scale, and the economy of the British colonies there depended on slave labor, particularly regarding cotton, sugar and tobacco output. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century the number of slaves being brought to the Americas increased exponentially, and at the time of American independence it was legal in all thirteen colonies. Although slavery became increasingly prohibited in the north, the number of slaves remained high during this time as they were simply relocated or sold from the north to the south. It is also important to remember that the children of slaves were also viewed as property, and (apart from some very rare cases) were born into a life of slavery. Abolition and the American Civil War In the years that followed independence, the Northern States began gradually prohibiting slavery, and it was officially abolished there by 1805, and the importation of slave labor was prohibited nationwide from 1808 (although both still existed in practice after this). Business owners in the Southern States however depended on slave labor in order to meet the demand of their rapidly expanding industries, and the issue of slavery continued to polarize American society in the decades to come. This culminated in the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, who promised to prohibit slavery in the newly acquired territories to the west, leading to the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. Although the Confederacy (south) were victorious in much of the early stages of the war, the strength in numbers of the northern states (including many free, black men), eventually resulted in a victory for the Union (north), and the nationwide abolishment of slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Legacy In total, an estimated twelve to thirteen million Africans were transported to the Americas as slaves, and this does not include the high number who did not survive the journey (which was as high as 23 percent in some years). In the 150 years since the abolishment of slavery in the US, the African-American community have continuously campaigned for equal rights and opportunities that were not afforded to them along with freedom. The most prominent themes have been the Civil Rights Movement, voter suppression, mass incarceration and the relationship between the police and the African-American community has taken the spotlight in recent years.